Screaming in the Dark
by Nerdmom1701
Summary: A one shot that takes place near the end of the episode "Entity", where O'Neill sits vigil at Carter's bedside, while she's on life support. One of my favourite episodes. Sorry, the thumbnail's being difficult.


**A/N —** So this is my first non-Voltron work for FFN. I always loved SG-1 but thought I was a bit biased, as I live in the province where it is shot and my husband worked only steps from the place where they filmed. (He's not in the industry, so don't envy me.) Now I know that you guys are all over the world! Sooo happy! Hope you like my little one shot, and review if you can.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Stargate SG-1, just my imagination.

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He couldn't stop looking at her hands.

There were plenty of places he had tried to look; the floor in front of him… his own hands, which were currently playing with that damn metal light pen obsessively… the monitors beside her head that counted the number of beats that her heart had left. Those were the places to be staring at. Those were the safe places.

It wasn't appropriate to watch her chest – as it rose and fell, knowing that a machine was responsible for the movement. It wasn't productive to look at her lips – ignoring the tube that was inserted down her throat and remembering her dazzling smile when he cracked a joke… or gave in to something that she really wanted to do that would inconvenience or irritate him.

It _really _wasn't smart to look at all of her, as a person. That only brought up all the memories of how much she had brought into his life, how she made the day better for them all by just being there.

How her leaving would completely destroy him.

So he looked at her hands. He couldn't look anywhere else. Time had started to slow down, and was losing all meaning for him. He was trying to exist in this moment in time, trying to stretch it out so he could continue to live between the heartbeats, so he could put off the grief just a little while longer.

How long had he been here anyway? Minutes… hours… days… his whole damn life? The part of him that wanted to know was being drowned out by the part of him that didn't really give a damn, because he suspected that the time Samantha Carter had left was less than the time he had been there.

_She really had beautiful hands_, he thought. Her fingers were long and pale. The index finger and the side of her middle finger were calloused slightly on the right hand, from years of carrying and firing a P-90. Her nails were short and clean, but were painted in that style that women seemed to like to do to make them look like they have nails.

When did Carter ever have time to get a manicure? She worked about a million hours a week in the lab, it seemed. Did she do it herself? How long had she had them like that? The question was really beginning to bother him. Had any one else noticed the effort that she had put into her nails? Surely _someone_ had commented.

He resisted the urge to clasp her hands in his own – to feel their warmth. He seems to resist every urge he initially has, at least when it comes to her. He certainly resisted the urge to NOT shoot her dead. If she had looked at him with Sam's eyes – if it had been really her – then he was sure that he never could have done it. He would have let the mountain bury them first.

She just hadn't… gone… down! One zat blast should have been enough. Why couldn't it have been enough? Why had he been forced to shoot a second time? Hadn't it been enough that the entity had destroyed her mind – had it wanted revenge by making him destroy her body as well, in order to get rid of it? As it was, the memory of her eyes staring at him – of the entity burning them with that hard stare, as though daring him to do it – was going to invade his nightmares for a very long time. He wondered if it would be all he would remember – if he would welcome that memory as the only one that lingered. God, he hoped not.

As it was, he was even afraid to look at her closed eyes, for fear that the entity had somehow survived and would open them suddenly, like it had a few hours ago. The monitoring equipment told him that wouldn't happen, however. The machine beside her head was making her heart beat and her lungs inflate – it couldn't make her mind turn on again. And that was the problem.

Everything that made her what she is – what she was – was gone. Those incredible squiggles, that measured the copious amounts of brain power she always seemed to have on command, lay flat and unresponsive, despite Janet's best efforts. His heart clenched in his chest at the thought. Janet had left him there to research any treatments she may not have thought of, but she was working through her denial, just like he was. Janet had pioneered the treatments here at the SGC. She could save lives in ways that other doctors could only dream and drool about. If there were any treatment for jump-starting a mind, Janet sure as hell would have known about it.

It was the silence that terrified him the most. Samantha Carter was never silent. Even when she never said a word or moved a muscle, he could still hear her. He could hear her mind going over a thousand things in the blink of an eye – the synapses going off like fireworks, telling her when or how to move, what the options were available to them, where her team was, anticipating what he might need from her.

Daniel had that quality too. The difference was that the mental sound could be chaotic, like clashing cymbals, car horns honking and trumpets blaring – his emotions caught up in it all. Hers was different. It was quiet, persistent, and fluidly in motion. All of that was like music; a background noise that hummed comfortingly, and told him that she was there, and had his back.

He had come to depend on that hum. He had gotten used to it. Sometimes he thought that he could see it right in the sparkle of her eyes. She would simply look at some of the weird alien tech, and her face would light up like it was Christmas. Oh, she could just stare at something for hours – a computer screen, a power source, a little doodad that nobody had ever seen and fewer cared about – but the sound of her thinking never stopped. Most times, he could practically feel it around her. He didn't think that even sleep turned it off. It had become a constant part of his life, to the point where he wasn't sure that he could function without it.

More to the point, he had come to depend on her to keep the silence at bay – his silence. He often made jokes about having nothing upstairs, but it was the ghosts of all the things that he had done – of all the things that he couldn't say – that was the echoing silence that threatened to overwhelm him in dark and inopportune times.

And yet, it was better with her there. Her music filled the silence. Even now, when all that could be heard was the whooshing of the machines that kept her breathing, he still didn't feel so alone with the silence.

He could hold on, just a little while longer.

He was tired. He was tired of holding on to a hope that no one else shared. Tired of holding on to the cliff face of hope with broken fingernails and failing strength –sliding down into the abyss without a rope, asking for one more miracle to be sent his way. He doesn't fall into that hole as much anymore, but it used to be filled with Carter's music, and now he isn't sure that if she leaves he will ever find the bottom. He was once lost there when his son died – but he had been younger then, and he had found a reason to live again. She was a part of that reason, he knew. The bottom had been finite. He didn't trust that it was the case anymore.

He heard Janet come up to Carter, and then turn to face him. She is asking him stupid questions about wills and final orders. As if he didn't know what she had wanted. He could tell her mood from the twist of her lips and the tilt of her head, how could he not know what she wanted? They all had shared too many close calls NOT to know.

He knew that she deserved to have her wishes honoured. She deserved everything that this world had to offer. She deserved her life back. She deserved to have her music back, but all he could really do was grant her final request.

So why was he hesitating? Why did he tell Janet to wait a few minutes? Why couldn't he simply give the order? Was he just putting off the pain? If he was, it wasn't working. Janet looked like the force of will alone was holding her up. Did he enjoy listening to the sound of machines that were essentially animating a dead body? No, the reason was simpler than that.

He hadn't let go of his hope yet. He was still holding on to the cliff face – broken fingernails and all. He wanted to challenge her one last time – deny her something and see if she would rise to the challenge. He wanted her to scream at him from the silence and force him to pay attention. He wanted her to figure out a way out of this.

He wanted the music back.

Daniel and Teal'c were here now. They wouldn't press him to decide, at least not yet. They still had the stunned look of denial on their faces. It will be gone soon, but until then, He would keep holding on to the hope.

He would still keep looking at her hands.


End file.
